


Moribund

by SkyyeStrike



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: 31 Days Of Halloween, Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Blood and Gore, Halloween, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-05
Updated: 2020-10-05
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:35:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26836801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkyyeStrike/pseuds/SkyyeStrike
Summary: Gabriel Reyes has always considered himself a night person.On this particular night, he makes an unwilling vow.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	Moribund

**Author's Note:**

> Moribund (n)  
> Meaning at the point of death, or to converge on the point of terminal death.
> 
> From the latin moribundus, ‘mori’ meaning to die.

Gabriel Reyes has always considered himself a night person.

In high school this worked out well- he could out party the best of them and keep going until dawn, being only a little worse for wear. It helped when he had to cram towards the end of semesters and stay up long nights just so he could graduate with a solid diploma. It especially helped during that brief period of time when Gabriel had been grinding video games like it was his job, too. Man, how he wishes he could just rewind time back to that nice, insignificant little spot.

His family liked to joke that the nighttime restlessness was part of their old family curse. Everyone in his family seemed to thrive during the night- their house was always bright and filled with the smell of food, the sound of games and the chatter of friends until the moon was high up in the sky. They had laughed about fables of their ancestors, so friendly with the night that they could have been owls themselves, basking in the moonlight. 

“Don’t say such things!” His grandmother used to gripe, smacking them all with her wooden spoon whenever they spoke about it too close to her earshot. “He will come to your bedside and  _ steal  _ you away!”

By ‘He,’ she had meant, of course, the Night Owl. The native boogeyman that her own abuelito had scolded her into fearing when she had been a child. But Gabriel had never really put any stock in superstition. Believing in a giant man owl that thirsted for the blood of children? He couldn’t think of anything that seemed sillier.

Gabriel’s abuela had always been the overly superstitious type.

Familial curse or fairy tale, being a night owl continued to be an asset in Gabriel’s eyes. In bootcamp, it allowed him to go longer and harder than other cadets, singling him out. And on blackops missions like this one, sunk deep within enemy territory, his awareness and ability to push sleep far from his scope was probably his only saving grace.

Tonight’s a full moon- it glints white over the landscape, bleaching everything in its path and obliterating any chance for disguised cover. A problem, now that Gabriel desperately needed some shadows to hide away in, slink back to the closest base.

Good training tells him he should circle around to the far side of the pines and hit up the rendezvous point on the slim chance that anyone else on his team made it there. Better sense tells him that the chance of that is already long gone. 

He’s haggard as it is. Low on ammo, and sporting a nice knock to the temple that had blown his vision for a solid 3 minutes- enough of a warning sign for him to start looking for concussion symptoms. He’s tired from the long run, jogging through the desert and ducking from cover to cover as he goes. His pursuers were probably still on dirtbikes, looking for him with spotlights, but the sound had been a distant buzz for a while now. 

He skids over some dry shale and nearly slips down into a long gully like a slice through the landscape. Hopefully, he can follow the shallow ravine up into the treeline without anyone the wiser. The motors on the horizon buzzed like angry wasps, drawing nearer steadily.

The moon itself is a damn beacon. Gabriel has to stay crouched low for any cover, but he’s still horribly exposed like this. Wearing black and tan didn’t help shit if it was as bright on the landscape like broad daylight. He needs cover. The treeline is so close, and yet it feels impossibly far away with him forced into this crouching crawl.

A triumphant whoop from behind heralds the fact that Gabriel is out of time. 

A spotlight skids over him and then back, and Gabriel ducks away from the glaring shine. The roll brings him into some thistle bushes that drag at his clothes, and Gabriel takes off, racing for the trees. 

The sound of motors accelerating and headlights throwing his running shadow into crazy bouncing arrays over the rocks- he’s been made. Shots ring out and ping dangerously around his feet, a bullet glancing by his side close enough that Gabe can feel the kinetic energy whizz by. He skids low, dodges like some kind of rabbit in the underbrush, his goal so close he can taste it- If he could just get among the trunks, the chances of him getting shot at went significantly down. He just had to  _ get _ there.

The bikes are on him now, and the next bullet is fired so close it can’t miss it’s mark. Gabriel feels it bludgeon his left shoulder that bowls him forward, onto his hands and knees and almost face first into a small pine tree, which he uses to haul himself around the stump of the next, a knife already pulled from his boot. 

He barely has to look, using sound as his aim and hurling the knife. It spins homeward into the front wheel of the first bike, and there’s yelling as the rider is launched off of his vehicle. Shouts chorus around as the bikes have to slow in the treeline, perilously close to Gabriel’s hiding place, but he stays put, trying to keep his loud panting from giving away his location. There’s a low rev of an engine barely a few feet from his right, and Gabriel breathes deep. 

In a flash, he launches himself forward from his hiding place and hits both riders on the bike with his trench knives brandished, laying out among them before they had a chance to get their bearings. He knocks one of them good and solid in the temple almost immediately, and the guy drops like a stone out cold and half trapped underneath his toppled bike. 

The other one is luckier and falls on Gabriel with an angry yell, and the two of them crash loudly into the underbrush. Gabriel gets socked solid in the cheekbone, but he always gives as good as he gets- unfortunately, this guy is loud, and their fight is sure to attract the others. Gabriel has to wrap this up quick. 

He grapples, using the knuckles of the knives to slam into first a collarbone, then into a shoulder socket. A second blow and he feels it roll, close to dislocating, and his attacker swears at him, catching Gabriel in the jaw with an elbow and a knee to the groin.

Gabriel curls, gets a knee between the two of them with the motion, and kicks hard. It doesn’t give him as much room as he wants it to, cause this fucker is  _ heavy _ , but it’s enough. A backhand rolls them both until Gabriel comes out on top, slamming another hit into the weakened shoulder joint and it comes free with an audible pop.

The force of a rushing bull rams into Gabriel’s side and Gabriel flies sideways, into a tree that jars his smarting shoulder. The adrenaline is so high right now though, he barely feels it, whirling around and using the tree as cover when a shot rings out again. 

Disable one, and another one brings a gun to the knife fight. Figures. 

With a quiet breath to steady himself, Gabriel tucks one of his knives away and replaces it with his handgun. Two shots left. 

He crosses the handgun with his trench knife, clutched in his already bloodied knuckles. Better make both of them count. 

Crashing in the bushes. There’s probably more of them, and two already knew where he was hiding out. He wishes he had that knife he had thrown- should’ve conserved it. 

He laughs at himself, maybe a little hysterical, outnumbered, outgunned, outsmarted. Should’ve, could’ve, would’ve.

He rolls when a snapping branch comes too close and is rewarded with a shotgun blast in the spot he’s just been. A thunk and cha-chink as it reloads but Gabriel already has his gun up, and the trigger pulled. The bullet keels the shotgun wielder backwards, pinpointed smack through the forehead, and before the shotgun can even hit the ground, a pistol shot shreds the bark where Gabriel is crouched. 

Splinters spray over his face. Gabriel squints, spits a few wayward shards from his mouth and swings to the other side of the tree, using the butt of the gun to slam the tender spot where the pistol-wielder’s neck and shoulder met to get him down to his knees. He levels the gun at the back of a skull, executioner style. 

WIth a roar, One-Arm comes at him. Gabriel loses his shot in favor of blocking a roundhouse kick, parrying the next, and completely missing the opposing knife that has appeared from nowhere. It spears into the flesh of his gun arm, right through the forearm to the hilt. Gabriel even thinks he hears it scrape bone. 

He yells at the knife. Yells again at the bastard who’s grinning at him in sick satisfaction. This absolutely miserable _ fuck _ . 

One-arm’s shoulder pile drives into Gabriel’s stomach, a regular footballer in the field. The air gushes from Gabe, much like the open wound leaking from his side, spilling blood like escaped air. He drops his now useless gun and switches for the knife in his better hand before driving it sideways, into a neck then up and under, into the footballer’s stomach. 

Nothing as satisfying as watching that smirk melt into pained horror. 

The pistol-wielder chooses that moment to hurl himself onto Gabriel’s back and starts stabbing in rapid fire. Kevlar can only really do so much, and the first blow glances across Gabe’s chest and over his shoulder, slicing deep, the next one sinks into his ribs, slides between them in a way that was very, very bad. 

Gabriel roars. When the knife next lodges in his thigh, tearing sideways and sinking into bone until it sticks, Gabe flings himself backwards, stumble-falling until he hits another tree with the pistol-wielder his unlucky pincushion. He brings the gun up beneath his opponents chin, shuts his eyes and fires his last shot. 

Firing a gun right next to Gabriel’s ear, he  _ feels  _ himself go deaf rather than hears it. Everything becomes muffled, painful, and ringing all at once, warm splatter of blood and bone splinters dripping down from the overhanging tree like blood rain. 

Gabriel twists his knifed arm wrenching the knife from this asshole’s grasp and kicking his knee away while the other is still trying to grasp at the trench knife in his belly.

“You fuck!” The last opponent in line hisses at him. He’s fresh to the fight and holding a pipe, which is dangerous enough, but if he’s like the others, there’s a knife and probably his own gun stashed somewhere on his person. Look at his dirt tousled appearance, Gabriel is pretty sure this is the one he’d knocked from his bike. Slow to catch up, wasn’t he?

Gabriel pants, assessing him. Boy, no older than 20 for sure. Probably even greener than these lucky punks, bleeding out on the forest floor. 

Gabriel pulls the knife still lodged in his mangled arm free and flexes his fingers to make sure everything still worked. Hurt like a son of a bitch and was bleeding a helluva lot, but workable. He regards the boy. “Walk away now and we both leave this forest alive.”

It’s a bland offer- one Gabriel rarely makes, but he’s tired, he’s bleeding out, he’s injured in a shitton of places, and this kid honestly really didn’t deserve to die for such a shitty cause as this one. 

The pipe brandishes. Sure enough, a matching knife to the one that had fucked up Gabriel’s arm comes forth, flickering silver in the moonlight. “ _ Like hell _ , you fucking _ bastard. _ ”

If Gabriel had a nickel for every man that died for their stupidity and pride.

He untucks his remaining trench knife and slides his fingers through the knuckles. Every time he breathes, it burbles inside of him, syrupy like he’s sucking through a straw… one of those knives had definitely nicked a lung, which meant he was on borrowed time. 

_ C’mon Gabe. One last fight _ , he tells himself resolutely, dropping back into a fighting stance and crossing the knives before him, one after the other. “Alright then.” He offers with a small jerk of the knives towards himself. “Come at me,  _ dulce _ .”

With a savage snarl, the 20-something springs forward, and like a hellcat he’s on Gabe. 

Steel clashes and Gabe punches away the metal pipe swung at his head, brings his arm up and under a sloppy jab from the kid’s knifing hand. It shoots wide to the side, far out of the way and just as quickly comes back, forcing Gabe to duck and weave around the mad swings. The pipe nearly clips him in the knee and he knocks that away too before managing to slam the pommel of his borrowed dagger into a throat. 

The kid gargles, clutches at his throat and staggers a bit, then viciously whips his knife at Gabe. It hurtles through the air with a whistle, landing in a tree trunk behind Gabe with a solid thunk, embedded deep and not coming out anytime soon. 

Then, the little green-horn starts swinging the pipe at him in earnest, both hands behind the force of it, using it like a bat until Gabe is scrambling backwards to keep out of range. The metal smacks his hand, smashes into the smaller knife and fucks his knuckles up enough that Gabe nearly drops the it. Before he can, he makes a swipe, but the borrowed dagger isn’t as long as Gabe’s personal matched set of trench knives and skims shallowly across the brat’s cheek, drawing first true blood between them. 

Using the advantage, Gabriel’s foot snakes out, pulls the kid’s ankle forward and off balance, making him windmill wildly, pipe flying wide smacking into branches and the undersides of trees. 

The blow to Gabe’s head though, the blood loss, the running all night- they’re catching up with him. He’s slow to react, unable to block fast enough. Before Gabe can finish knocking the kid onto his ass, the pipe comes up and hits him right over the stab on his ribs. 

Gabriel gasps, seeing stars and doubling over, clutching his side. God that fucking  _ hurt _ .

The pipe hits him again, over his back, then again and again over his head to bring Gabriel down to his knees. His arms come up under the rain of ensuing blows, threatening to bash right into Gabriel’s brain. A steel-toe boot lands in his side and he hears a distinct  _ snap _ , and Gabriel’s vision goes white.

Blind, in pain and rageful, Gabriel lashes out, and the little dagger hits it’s mark in unprotected calf muscle. That would teach the fucker to kick him. A wailing scream pierces the bloodbath in the woods, and the pipe comes down in a fury. 

If it kept going like this, Gabe was going to lose consciousness before he made any headway. Might actually get his skull bashed in. Dead in the woods at the hands of not mercenaries, not gang lords, but some little asswipe with few lucky shots.

_ No. _ Gabriel had  _ not  _ come this far to let _ a greenhorn  _ do him in. 

With a roar of rage, a final burst of strength, Gabriel launches himself upwards with his very last weapon, the last card in his deck. 

The kid doesn’t even see it coming- Gabriel’s trench knife rams into the soft underside of the kid’s jaw right into his skull and sinks down to the knuckle halfway through a swing. The blade’s hooked tip sticks out through his forehead like a crown, a dribble of blood sliding down slow between his wide-staring eyes, With a coughing sputter that spews viscous droplets all over Gabriel’s face, he goes limp. The pipe clatters away into the undergrowth. 

The ensuing silence is palpable. The fight had made the wildlife flee, and with business now concluded, all that was left was solid nighttime muffled by a bedding of pine needles and evergreen foliage.

Gabriel drops like a stone, pushes the body hanging from his gored knife away from him, and it collapses away from him like a puppet cut strings, blood leaking from the slack jaw onto the stained grass. With a grimace, Gabriel drags himself far enough away that his boots aren’t sitting in the spillage.

Fuck. Gabe hated killing kids. The dude was like, only four years younger than _ him _ . 

He puts his forehead on a knee, head swimming, black spots closing in at the edges of his vision. He was  _ dangerously  _ close to passing out. At this rate, he wasn’t going to make it back to base. 

Reality begins to sink in like a slow seepage through his adrenalin bruised senses. A though occurs rather solemnly that he  _ wasn’t _ going to make it back to base. None of his team had probably made it out of the building, much less out across the desert this far. He was barely halfway towards their rendezvous point, and now with goons dead and strewn about the entrance of the woods, there were bound to be more hot on Gabriel’s trail within the hour. 

He tips his head back, gazes up at the moon. Damn thing looked too peaceful for this bullshit. Still full and pregnant, slung low in the sky and massive in it’s descent down to the horizon, bright as any solar beam, and offering no aid at all. Behind Gabriel, the sun was just beginning to stretch pastel fingers over the starscape, 

He can’t help but think that if there’s any good way to die, at least he’s doing it on a night as beautiful as this. Even if it is for the shittiest of reasons. 

Small mercies… right?

God. He hadn’t really thought it would end like this. Pathetic. Wasn’t there something written about only the good dying young? Gabriel certainly didn’t fit that description, which seems almost unfair. 

A hoot from over Gabriel’s shoulder scares the living shit out of him. If he had more energy, he would have jumped, but as it is, he just manages to make out a shadowy shape nestled on a branch not far from his shoulder.

It’s an owl. A fucking barn owl. 

An omen of bad luck, his grandmother would say. ' _An owl on the windowsill means that someone close will die,_ ' Abuela whispers to him from beyond the grave. 

He coughs and it burbles sickly in his chest, letting him have less and less air each passing moment. For never believing in his abuelas omens, this was pretty fitting. A barn owl come to ferry his soul to the land of the dead. 

The barn owl is looking right at him, with massive liquid dark eyes that in the lighting, voidless black pits. It hoots again, startlingly loud, and takes another hop closer. 

_ Creepy little fucker _ , Gabriel thinks, side eyeing the creature and wondering just how close it would get. The smell of blood had probably attracted it. 

“Waiting for first pickings, eh?” Gabriel huffs at it, breathing getting beleaguered. He should probably shoo it or something, before it tried to get a taste of ‘fresh Reyes’ too early. All Gabriel manages is a pretty pathetic flutter of his hand in it’s direction. 

Well. He was pretty much just meat anyways, now. He wonders if they’ll even send a search party out, looking for their team. No contact at all for the past 36 hours made Gabriel doubt it. 

The owl, undeterred, is hopping ever closer, step by step with its ghostly pale mask unblinking, feathers stained so dark they looked like black oil in the reflective moonrays. Just looking at it gave Gabriel chills, the hair over his arms and necks rising up as the bird settles just beside Gabriel’s shredded leg, right within arms reach. 

The owl leans forward with its eyes on Gabriel like some kind of dare, and with one quick motion pecks at the shredded canvas, bloody material and split flesh that is what’s left of Gabriel’s thigh. 

Gabriel yelps, jerking his leg away from the stupid thing. The peck hadn’t even hurt in comparison to everything else, but seriously, what the hell?

The owl flutters upwards and resettles onto Gabriel’s boot in a fluster, and barrage of wing strewn air, strangely heavy. If Gabriel had thought that the hoot given before had been loud, it was nothing next the ear-shattering screech it wailed at him just then, neck feathers ruffled up like a mane in agitation. The thing looked like a bloody demon from hell.

“ _ Christ! _ ” Gabriel hisses, and tries to kick it away, flailing his boot. But the owl didn’t seem to be scared at all- if anything, Gabriel’s movement seemed to be making it angrier, feathered collar rising and fluffing into a foreboding mane, body lowering down to the ground with a serpentine hiss. 

With trepidation, Gabriel watches it’s wings rise up while it stalks towards him, and tries not to shrink into the tree with the anticipation of what he could see coming. His throat squeezes shut.

“Don’t you dare-” He manages just before it’s on him in a flurry of wings and feathers and talons that try to tear into him. Gabriel swears, tries to duck away, but with his leg, and his innards pretty much falling out of him at this point, there’s not much he can do. 

Gabriel curls, balling up into fetal position in an attempt to shelter his head and neck with his arms. He feels claws snag his temple and the edge of his ear before raking across his scalp. Blood drips down around him, and honestly, he’d thought he was running out of the red stuff to give. 

Of all the ways to go down, he was gonna die by damn  _ owl _ in the  _ woods _ ? Not even the  _ kid _ ?

What a surreally impossible way to go. He was gonna  _ murder  _ this bird. 

Gabriel launches upwards, drags from within himself whatever remaining dregs of adrenaline he can, and lashes about himself until he comes in contact with  _ something. _ His fingers tighten, automatic, and the screeching turns deafening. 

He has one of its wings, and in powerful vehemence, the beast lashes back at him, flaying the skin from the hand that grips it, shredding into Gabriel’s wrist, adding more blood to the stuff that’s sticking tacky to is elbows.

He snatchs at it, getting his thumb torn wide open by a beak that hisses violently at him, unwilling to lose it’s life to it’s meal. Gabriel would rather bleed to death with pride than get eaten alive by an overeager bird, so he doesn’t let go.

He finally gets both it’s wings in one hand, and one of the legs in the other when the owl just stops. It goes limp within Gabriel’s fingers, like he’s broken it’s neck, dropped like the kid only a few paces away from him. He hadn’t shaken the vile thing  _ that _ hard.

Gabriel stares at it, just a limp black and white shape, slowly being drenched in the blood of his hands. Despite the banked ferocity he can feel just under his fingers, it feels almost like he’s holding nothing… was this some sort of crazy death hallucination? Maybe that smack on the head had knocked a few screws too loose?

Feeling like he’s losing it a little, and yet still unwilling to release the owl in case it decided to pick another fight, Gabriel shakes his head.  _ What the fuck was going on? _

A twitch, then a spasm that’s not quite lifelike shakes the bird’s form.

Unearthly, it’s head spins, a 180 axis that should be normal for a bird of prey, and yet looks inherently wrong somehow. It’s body is still listless dripping black ink in Gabriel’s hands. The owl’s beak opens, maw stained with Gabriel’s blood, and instead of funereal screeing, a voice like nothing Gabriel’s ever heard thunders through the little clearing Gabriel’s thrashing with the owl had created. 

“ _ Congratulations, hunter. _ ” It echoes. Gabriel jumps, drops the owl and it lands on his feet, unblinking bone white mask gazing. He kicks it off of him and the body rolls away, but the mask is immovable and unwavering, fixated on Gabriel’s face. “ _ You have faced your maker with bared teeth, as a worthy warrior. Let the moon bless you. _ ”

Then, the beak cracks, one solid snap that unhinges a jaw far too large of it’s head, splitting like two halves of an alligator’s jaw, and peeling away to reveal smoke. Smoke pouring from a gaping maw, the top half of it’s head folded back like a discarded hood, dissolving what’s left of the owl.

One moment, Gabriel is looking at a perverse, boneless bundle of feathers, and then it’s just shadows, midnight black, oily shadows that percolate into more darkness. The bleached mask flickers, sliced in half neatly down the center and melts completely away. And the murkiness dribbling onto his legs? He can smell the stench of death, the acrid tang of decay as it dribbles over his knees and shines acidic, writhing along the ground like it had gained a life of its own. It curls over his cargo pants, laces his knees together like ethereal shackles. 

When it gets to the open flesh of his leg, it burns like a hellfire. 

Gabriel panics, scrapes at the smoke that’s like acid pouring into his open wounds. But that only makes it cling to his fingers, dissolving into his skin as fast as he can touch it and so obliteratingly icy cold it’s scalding. Shadows that race up his arms and torso faster than he can even think, sinking claws down into his chest through cloth and armor-

“WHAT the FU-!” Gabriel’s frenetic swiping is useless, and the bitter cold coils and twists until he’s being enveloped up to his neck, drowning and being crushed at the same time. He opens his mouth to scream and the dense fog fills into the gaping maw of his mouth, flows down his throat, slides through him until all that was left were Gabriel’s blank eyes staring up through the pines to the sky above. Unseeing, begging the moon for help.

He can’t breath. His lungs have frozen, his heart feels stopped, incinerated by white hot ice until he is hollow, empty like charred remains. Scalded from the inside out. His mouth tastes like bitter ash, dry like the baked sahara and his head being filled with similar sand until spilled over him, threatening to drown.

Gabriel collapses forward, down onto his elbows and unable to support himself, trying to cough, trying to heave and _ breathe _ . Fog like liquid ink dribbles from his mouth, down into the dry grass and pine needles between his bloody hands. Everything inside of him feels like fire, everywhere his skin touches the ground is branded, softened and made malleable, until Gabriel feels like he’s falling apart. Like he’s burning up alive and melting away into the ground.

He screams again, and it erupts from him like a geyser. It can’t even _ be _ him, it sounds like nothing he’s ever heard- a primal something that echoes out of him from the depths of his nightmares, made visceral. The woods are loud with the crack of bones like kindling, the smell of flesh made anew. 

God, he’s dying and it’s worse than he ever imagined. He wishes he would just die already. 

He dissolves. Much like the barn owl, like the smoke that had strangled him, Gabriel dissolves away into the ground, into nothing, becoming shadows and reforms as a shade. 

Under a stark alabaster moon glinting cold over the forest, Gabriel Reyes reemerges from the pit of smoke and flame something wholly new.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Alone - Night Lovell  
> Reaper Death Seal - MAKAVELIGOD, Harper & Baker Ya Maker
> 
> This was written as part of a much larger supernatural-theme story I had tapped out, but the idea has stagnated a bit since I put it down. I figured Halloween was as good a time as any to let it fly free, eh?
> 
> This may not be the only halloween story I put up. Hope you enjoyed!


End file.
